Insects such as mosquitoes cause significant human suffering by transmission of infectious disease to humans. The infections carried by mosquitoes afflict humans, as well as companion animals such as dogs and horses. Infectious agents transmitted by mosquitos cause illnesses such as encephalitis, Chikungunya, yellow fever, West Nile fever, malaria, and Dengue. The transmission of diseases associated with mosquito bites can be interrupted by killing the mosquitoes, isolating infected people from all mosquitoes while they are infectious or vaccinating the exposed population.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) vaccination is one technique used to stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses to foreign antigens, such as Malaria, JEV, WNV, EEEV, VEEV, SINV, CHIKV, DENV, ZIKV and YFV antigens. The direct injection of genetically engineered DNA (e.g., naked plasmid DNA) into a living host results in a small number of its cells directly producing an antigen, resulting in a protective immunological response. With this technique, however, comes potential problems, including the possibility of insertional mutagenesis, which could lead to the activation of oncogenes or the inhibition of tumor suppressor genes.